WEF's membership newsletter covers current Federation activities, Member Association news, and items of concern to the water quality field. WEF Highlights is your source for the most up-to-the-minute WEF news and member information.

February
2010, Vol.
47, No.
1

Top Story

Once he graduated from the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis), Mark Luckhardt knew only that he wanted to travel. But he ended up making a real difference for residents in and around San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, when the Water Environment Federation (Alexandria, Va.) student member found out about an Engineers Without Borders (EWB; Boulder) rainwater harvesting project and decided to help out.

Luckhardt first became an EWB student member in January 2009 and signed on for a project to install a rainwater harvesting tank at a school in Simajuleu, a suburb of Comalapa. To do this, the EWB group worked with the nonprofit Long Way Home, which is based in Comalapa, to determine logistics of the project and have a local liaison between the group and the local community, Luckhardt said.

As members of the Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Va.), we are dedicated to preserving and enhancing the water environment. To this end, WEF not only needs to help educate and train members but also needs to engage the public in WEF’s mission, relating how individuals can contribute. I’d like to outline a few ways to accomplish the latter.

First, our overall messaging is important. Water is unique because of its properties and, more importantly, because it is essential for life: There is no substitute. Yet the availability of clean water continually is being challenged worldwide. More than 2.6 billion people do not have safe water to drink and adequate sanitation, and as a result, millions die every year. Even in the United States, we have severe water shortages coast to coast, more than 40% of U.S. waters do not have quality that meets their intended uses, and challenging questions continue to arise about the safety of our waters.

As a growing number of wastewater professionals are being tasked with managing stormwater, the Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Va.) has responded by producing a variety of stormwater resources for its members and introducing a new task force to prioritize these resources.

Robert E. Adamski, Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Va.) member since 1981, received the Water for People (Denver) 2009 Robert W. Hite Outstanding Leadership Award during an Oct. 13 awards ceremony at WEFTEC®.09 in Orlando, Fla.

Adamski, vice president of municipal infrastructure programs for Gannett Fleming (Camp Hill, Pa.), served two terms on the Water for People board and has been active in its volunteer program, World Water Corps®.

“His contributions to Water for People are truly immense,” said Ned Breslin, chief executive officer of Water for People. “His service and support, not only to us as an organization, but more importantly to people throughout the world, have enabled many to fetch water from clean sources.”